For most people, existence in this world came about because somebody got horny. Horniness, similar to other bodily conditions, is the natural response to a ‘certain’ human need. So, why do we feel guilty about our sexual desires?

Like the need to eat food, go to the bathroom or look outside when we hear a noise, our body alerts us when we feel the need to fulfil these desires for the proper functioning of our systems. However, the need for sex or physical intimacy is treated as the bad cousin of bodily needs.

Your need or desire for sex is natural and overall, is important for the continuation of the human species. God in all His wisdom saw it fit to make sex enjoyable as an encouragement to make children. However, for a long time in recent history, sex has been labelled bad in Christian societies and people are made to feel guilty about their need for sex both inside and outside of marriage. 

Cornflakes and Celibacy

In March 1877, Doctor John Harvey Kellogg published a book called ‘Plain Facts about Sexual Life’. While I’m positive you’ve never heard the title of that book before, I can put my head on a block that you’ve heard the name Kellogg before. Yes that Kellogg, the cornflake man.

John was the Chief Medical Officer of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan from 1876 to 1943 and was an advocate for the vegetarian diet and healthy living. However, his patients would often complain about the bland monotonous food the hospital was serving. No surprise there, there was no beyond meat in the 1800s.

So John and his brother Will set out to make more palatable vegetarian dishes. They were experimenting with wheat flakes, then one faithful night in 1878 they accidentally invented the first ever cornflakes.

Eventually, John was kicked out of the family business (the drama I know) and Will Kellogg established the well-known brand Kellogg Cereal Company in 1922.

Why am I talking about cornflakes? Believe it or not, the simple popular breakfast food has a part to play in how the false ideas about sex trickled down to the modern church.

You see Doctor John Harvey Kellogg was not only an advocate for a healthy lifestyle but he was also a proponent of celibacy within and outside of marriage. You read that right. No coochie or coco for you even if you tie the knot.

Part of the reason why John and his brother disputed was because Will wanted to add sugar to the flakes, while John was strongly against it. He believed that the addition of certain foods would have an exciting influence on the genital organs (his words not mine).

In fact the whole point of making cornflakes in the first place was to attempt to create a food that lowers the desire for masturbation. I can imagine the marketing now, Kellogg’s cornflakes gets you up in the morning but keeps everything else down. But I digress.

Even though John was married he reportedly never slept with his wife and all of their 42 children were adopted. The man was obsessed with the idea of chastity. He considered sexual perversions to be the worst sin a person could commit and wished that everyone would remain celibate as he did.

A brief history of sex negativity

You might be thinking, well Niques was one very sad sexually frustrated guy in the 1800s, what does that have to do with the ideas surrounding sex today? And more importantly, what does that have to do with me?

We have to understand most of this man’s teachings on health were revolutionary for his time. His ideology of the NEWSTART lifestyle is still practised by doctors today. So it’s no surprise that some of his more wanky ideas about sex and marriage would get tossed in with everything else.

Kellogg was a devoted Christian and a prominent member of his church and although most of his teachings on sex and masturbation have been debunked and discredited today, a lot of his ideas still linger within modern Christendom.

Kellogg certainly wasn’t the first or the only one to dissuade people against sex and masturbation. Sometime between 1710 and 1716 an anonymous pamphlet was published in London with the outlandish title ‘Onania, or, The Heinous Sin of Self Pollution, and all its Frightful Consequences, in both SEXES Considered, with Spiritual and Physical Advice to those who have already injured themselves by this abominable practice.’ That is a mouthful.

After the publication of that pamphlet ‘The Great Terror’ (as historians Jean Stengers and Anne Van Neck call it in their book) mania swept Europe for decades. The sex negativity ideas moved from theology and made its way into medicine, sparking persistent myths such as masturbation leads to blindness.

These ideas from the 18^th century still persist today and create guilt surrounding being horny. However, as our understanding of the world around us evolves so too does our thinking have to evolve.

It’s Okay to be Horny

The idea of sexual shame or guilt is not a Biblical one. In fact, Jesus himself condemns sexual shame in John 8 during the stoning of the woman caught in adultery. It is important to understand that while shame can come from others, your guilt can be a result of what you believe about yourself.

When you feel guilty about being horny, essentially what you’re saying to yourself is “This is not right, I shouldn’t be feeling this way.”

However, horniness isn’t the problem; it’s what you do with it that can become an issue. Again, similar to food, when you’re hungry you don’t think “Hunger is not right, I shouldn’t be thinking about food,” You think “What should I eat? Where should I eat? Or When should I eat?” Then you can make a decision to eat now or later, to eat healthy foods or to eat junk.

We are trained to control aspects of our bodily responses such as hunger, the need to go to the bathroom and our need to rest. As a child, we learn through conditioning that we can hold in our urine and go to the bathroom when we choose. However, no one teaches us that we can control or train our need to reproduce. And any function left untrained will run wild.

Horniness is natural and normal and you shouldn’t feel guilty about your body functioning in the way God intended it to. So be horny. Explore what it means to be a sexual creature. But know that you are responsible for what you do with your horniness, whether it is with others or by yourself.

You’re going to hear me say this a lot and I going to sound like a broken record but I don’t care. You must learn to accept every part of yourself to grow as a person. If you choose to ignore certain aspects of your humanness you’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Trying to push it down and ignore it isn’t going to help you overcome you’re struggles. By embracing who you are, the good, the bad and the ugly you can then begin the transformation of mind, body and spirit. You’re horny because you’re human. Deal with it.

Remember,

Tell Your Story.

Niques